Wisconsin girl bitten by rabid bat while playing outside home

Cecelia “Cece” Kale, 6, of Tigerton, is receiving a rabies vaccine series after a bat bit her while she was climbing a tree in her family’s yard around 8 p.m. on June 23. Shawano County health officials confirmed the bat tested positive for rabies.

Bat bites and scratches can be so small they may go unnoticed, yet still transmit rabies. Any bite, scratch or contact with a bat’s saliva or mucous membranes is a potential exposure that needs immediate evaluation.

Bats and skunks are the state’s primary rabies reservoirs, and positive bats have outnumbered skunks for the past decade. Wisconsin’s last four human rabies cases occurred in 1959, 2000, 2004 and 2010, and all four were tied to bats.

Rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms begin, so a child who may have been bitten or scratched needs medical care as soon as possible after the encounter. Kale is now receiving a series of four shots.

A bat should be captured for testing only if it can be done safely without touching the animal. If there is any chance of contact, the family should call the local health department or animal control instead of handling it directly. In Shawano County, the infected bat was the first confirmed rabid bat of 2026.

The United States records around 4,000 animal rabies cases each year, with more than 90% in wildlife such as bats, raccoons, skunks and foxes. Bats are the leading source of human rabies deaths in the United States, and the CDC recorded two human rabies deaths in 2024, both linked to bat encounters.